Tag Archives: Christmas In Haworth

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Red Shoe Diaries are five friends from Nottingham who write pop songs for messed-up grown ups. I first met their bass player Rob while he was DJing at the bar I worked at, website probably some 7 or 8 years ago. It was like most bar work – fun with the right people, hospital intolerable with the wrong. Those nights Rob turned up with the Don’t Start Feeling All Romantic DJ crew were always the best.
When Fika Recordings kind of got going, visit web Red Shoe Diaries were one of the bands I wanted to get involved. They’re a bunch of lovely people and have recorded some absolutely beautiful songs, so it was always going to be easy. It was their determination for vinyl that got me out of my cassette comfort zone, for which I’m grateful now (though in the midst of the stress and chaos of getting it all together, there was probably a time where I’d have put that 10″ where the sun don’t shine…!)
So if you’ve not picked up a copy of their 10″ EP, When I Find My Heart…, head here to buy a copy. There’ll be more from Red Shoe Diaries in 2012 – expect a download only single and video for Ice & Snow, along with a couple of brand new b-sides… In the mean time, enjoy their download and the video!

Here’s what Tom (Red Shoe Diaries) has to say:
San Francisco Snowglobe , the working title of which was Don’t Stop Believing (in Father Christmas), is the first bit of home-recording that we have released. Fittingly fuelled by mince pies and mulled wine, and recorded this Sunday before watching Gremlins, it is several stories woven into one song about friends in far flung places, whom we miss at this time of year.
It’s a song of little snapshots of christmastime in different places. We like the thought of sunnier climes dressed up in faux snow and Christmas trees at this time of year, and snow-globes from places where it doesn’t really snow. We hope you enjoy the song.
Happy Holidays!

On to more Nottingham based Christmas fun from We Show Up On Radar.

WSUOR is Andy Wright. He’s a good chap, a funny one too. He writes somewhat surreal nursery rhymes; a balance of the dark and the twee. He’s got an album coming out in the new year. And he’s got a few shows with Anxieteam in London and Nottingham in January. He’s ace.

Another debut from one of my Secondary Modernists. Bill Botting steps aside from his day jobs in Moustache of Insanity, information pills The Secondary Modern AND Allo Darlin to give us not one but two slices of Australian Christmas cake.

Bill has been in my band the Secondary Modern for a few years now. It must be frustrating because Bill just wants to play bass like McCartney and I keep saying, don’t play bass like McCartney. However I play bass in Rotifer and Robert keep saying to me, Play it more like McCartney. Here’s Bill’s first song.

Bill has this to say…
“I haven’t written anything absolutely on my own for a few years. I think because I’m lucky enough to play with some of the best songwriters around I excuse a lack of confidence by telling myself I just don’t have enough time. But, if you make the effort the time is there. So I made time to write two Christmas songs. I really hope they stand up (or at least sit up straight) next to the frankly astounding Tigercats. I’m letting Darren decide if you get both or just one.

I love Christmas. Always have. I really do start listening to carols about August (only in secret though – I don’t play them out loud till November. I do tend to make things difficult for the people closest to me though, and I worry that at some point I’m going to fuck up Christmas and we won’t get it back. I think that’s the feeling I’ve had while writing. Trying not to ruin something you love, or hurt your loved ones.

“This is a song by the Sonics, which some Sonics fans don’t seem to like but I can’t understand why. We covered it quite faithfully last year in a suitably ragged style, but Duncan doesn’t let us get away with that kind of shit any more, so we mixed it up a bit an now it’s kind of like a Tigercats song. Laura played one of Darren’s synths on it once he’d told us how to take the lock off. Ian Button recorded it in his magic mobile studio and it was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had recording anything.” – Giles Barrett

Tom Fika Recordings here.
I think I’m allowed to briefly jump into Darren’s post, mention my love for both Bill and Tigercats, and make a bit of an annoucement…
***drum roll please****
Tigercats have an album coming out! And the vinyl will be on Fika Recordings!Isle Of Dogs should be out on March 26th 2012. We’ll be doing the LP, while Acuarela Discos handle the CD version. There’ll be new versions of tracks from their first couple of EPs and a handful of new songs too.
If you’ve not seen Tigercats live, please do, they’ve become one of my favourite live bands this year. They’ve got some shows coming up, so no excuses:
Jan 13 – George Tavern, Stepney
Jan 19 – MAP at the Silver Bullet, Finsbury Park
Jan 20 – Portland Arms (with Standard Fare)
Then they’ll be playing London Popfest on the 25th of February with Allo Darlin’, before doing a few dates with them on tour (Feb 26 Leeds Brudenell Social Club / Feb 27 Leicester The Musician / Mar 2 Norwich Arts Centre). Phew!

One of the highlights of my year has been discovering Frances Castle, viagra aka The Hardy Tree and Claypipe Music. Not only because she’s great company and fast becoming a new friend but also because she made my personal favourite album of the year.

A lot of my favourite music at the moment seems, to me, to deal with memory. The Hardy Tree sound instantly familiar but also strangely remote and exotic. Also in a world of dwindling record sales and bespoke, boutique releases, Frances really does the most beautiful limited, handprinted record sleeves.

Me and Frances will be releasing a record together with WIAIWYA records next year.

Dave Watkins has played with me for years in both the Secondary Modern and Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee and I was delighted that he has decided to make his songwriting debut on the Christmas advent. I was shocked that it was a six minute prog opus. Here Dave explains.

When Darren suggested contributing to a musical advent calendar, I immediately thought of Dave Sheppard. I haven’t recorded that much stuff on my own, and I wanted to partner with someone I like and could trust to help. With us were Ruth and Steve, who both work with me. (Ruth also plays bass in Crumbling Ghost, one of Stewart Lee’s album choices for the year.) We had a really fun Friday afternoon with Jon Clayton making this.

For my two daughters, snowmen, Christmas and winter are synonymous. My daughters are three and a half years old, and for weeks they have been asking me when The Snowman is coming to visit. They want him to live in the sitting room. Raymond Briggs is responsible.

Being a father has given me licence to love Christmas again. I once felt an obligation to be dismissive of its tinselly rituals. But now I believe they are magical – truly. And, because my own childhood was spent in the West Midlands during the 1970s, that sense of magic has found its expression in prog-inflected hard rock. – Dave Watkins

I didn’t listen to Standard Fare because of their name. Seriously, what is ed I’m that stupid. Emma Kupa, discount who writes and sings for Standard Fare is a truly ferocious talent. She has a completely natural musicality about everything she does and, order like all the best singers, is completely unaware of the oddness that makes her unique. I can’t think of anyone that sound like her and that’s the biggest compliment I can pay anyone these days. – Darren

Here’s Emma on her song. – This is the second or third time I’ve been asked to write a Christmas-themed song, and having succumbed the last few years, I didn’t want to write another song about Christmas or snow. I’m Jewish and this year Channuka coincides with Christmas, so that gave me an opportunity to sing about something different. The story goes that a flame in the temple lasted 8 days which was a miracle because they only had oil for one day. So I wanted to take this message (which is easily as good as how great some baby boy is!) and transfer it to the current political and economic situation. It feels like all hope is gone, but maybe we can keep the flame burning! – Emma Kupa

Rebecca Evans is one of several new friends I made during January Songs. She played clarinet on the song, ‘Staying In.’ She became an even better friend this summer when she took me to an old steam railway in the North East this summer. – Darren

One of the nicest things about this project has been people forming bands especially for the project. Here’s Rebecca on her song.

We put the band “The Dream of Horses” together just for the purpose of this project and recorded it all at home. My younger sister, Sophie Evans, wrote the majority of this song and tells me that the lyrics are all loosely based around people who think that they’re too cool for christmas.

We invited Jon Melvin in to do some of the vocal parts, Jon and me are in band together called The Union Choir and we’ve just released a christmas song with this band for another project – http://thechristmasproject.bandcamp.com/ – Rebecca Evans

The were a few acts that both me and Tom Fika wanted on our advent calendar so much so that we had to fight it out as to who ‘presented’ them. A swift kick to the shins and Moustache were mine.

Moustache of Insanity are funny. Not ‘smirk’ funny but smacking-the-floor-with-your-fist-in-pain funny. Here is Nick to tell you all about their song. – Darren

“Here’s our song. Hope you like it. It was recorded professionally, price by professionals, clinic using nothing but professional tools in a very professional manner.

Moustache of Insanity…raising the bar!

oh sweet mama.

Mary Eksmess!”

Woah! Tom Fika Recordings here. Before I limp away to nurse my bruised shins (hm, ailment cheers Darren) and you download the Christmas joy that is Jingle Moustache, let me put in my 2ps worth on Moustache Of Insanity. They were one of the bands involved in the first batch of Fika cassettes back in February (which sold out super quickly – luckily you can download it from their website). There’s something about MOI that never fails to make me smile; their live shows always get me dancing and giggling like a fool. That, for me, makes them awesome.
In August I was lucky enough to put out their Album Of Death on blood red 12″, which you can buy from here (and I really think you should, its one of my favourites of the year). Good times were had finger painting bloody messages of doom/terror/hiliarity stolen from all our favourite horror movies, dragging Bill and Nik out to old railways lines for photoshoots and the blood soaked album launch party in Brixton. I love the Moustache.Tom

Back in January I tried to write a song for every day of the month. You can find out about that here januarysongs.tumblr.com/ At the end of the project I was made aware of Ardie Collins who is writing a song for every day of this year.

Think about that a little, he will have written 365 songs this year. At least some of them must be bad right? This one isn’t though. Ardie will play with me at my two special January Songs shows in January that coincide with the physical release of January Songs and please support Ardie. I like stupid ideas that involve hard work.

I’m a novelist and singery-songwritery type person from Cardiff who has been undertaking a project since the 1st of January 2011 to release one original song every day for a year. It’s called The Cooper365 Project and I’m still on top of it as it moves towards its completion. The nature of the project has meant having to put out an entire year of things I’ve created, whether they’re good or bad or average, and it’s something I would highly recommend doing. This will undoubtedly be the thing I’m most proud of having done, and it’s mainly the prospect of being able to look back with a big, stupid grin on my face that has kept me going.

I’ve got a morbid fascination with Bluewater Shopping Centre, I love the way it’s such a blown-up Potemkin village, and it’s got the closest John Lewis to where I live. I was there shopping for a clothes rail recently. The whole place now feels like a desperate attempt to reenact the bygone boom times, and it made me wonder what it will all look like when the pretence collapses. Bluewater was only opened in 1999 and will make an interesting ruin. I decided to write my song about two young lovers in the shopping mall ten years from now when the decline of Western capitalism will have run its course. – Robert Rotifer

Yucca is Jacob Mayfield, brother of Dan from Enderby’s Room and the Secondary Modern. Jacob is also half of Victoria and Jacob. – Darren

Following on from Enderby’s Room’s ‘At Christmas Part One’, ‘At Christmas Part Two’ is an instrumental piece built around synthesiser and field recordings which attempts to recall vague memories of past family Christmas’s.
The recordings were taken in Christmas 2010 and include sounds of the indoor table game Bagatelle (Mayfield family tradition), a crackling log fire, Christmas dinner and the local pub. – Jacob

Dan Mayfield, sales who is Enderby’s Room, rx is one of my best friends. He takes care of my dog sometimes.

We found Dan when a whole gang of us played in a big line up of Ellis Island Sound. He was a music student and we were supposed to be teaching him, remedy he taught us. He has since become the longest standing member of my band, The Secondary Modern. Playing music with him is easy, natural and uncomplicated.

The thing about Dan is, that in a world of fake folkies and impostor accents, he is the real thing. He learned the violin playing with his parents in Morris bands. He knows folks standards by heart. I can’t think of anyone else that melody comes so easy to, he always underplays, he is always generous in a group setting. He sometimes pretends to be unfazed by music and that he prefers football. Nobody believes him.

I believe this song is about a Mayfield Christmas and is called ‘At Christmas Part One’. Dan’s brother Jacob will provide ‘At Christmas Part Two’ on Monday.

After yesterday’s seven song extravaganza, side effects we’re back to normal split single service today, symptoms with tracks from The Mountain Parade and Two Fingers Of Firewater.

I always find it hard moving to a new city. I like the adventure of discovering new places but always find it hard to meet the right people at the right shows for a new place to start to feel like home. Even more so when the place you’ve just moved to is Swindon, viagra 60mg where you’re lucky to get anything more than the local builder playing Led Zeppelin covers acoustically in the dodgy pub down the road. So it was a relief to be introduced to The Mountain Parade by a mutual friend, Rose, and get to know them and their side projects in both Oxford and Bristol during my time out west. Bands and people like these make these places special.

The Mountain Parade (2008-2010) were a middle-sized band from Oxford. They toured with The Middle Ones, recorded an album and then split up. This is their Christmas song.
Roxy currently plays as herself, Jamie is in The Cooling Pearls, Ric and Mark play with Matt Winkworth and Steve is in Boxcar Aldous Huxley and I Know I Have No Collar.

The other side of today’s split single comes from Two Fingers Of Firewater.

Here’s what they have to say about it:
“Sometimes it feels like Christmas is a tree to hang the months from. The rituals and traditions may remain unchanged from year to year, but the people we celebrate it with are both temporal and fragile. Maybe a sibling will leave their spouse, maybe another will have a baby; one enters as another leaves. But there are changes beyond our mere numbers. As we compare one another to the people we were twelve months previously, we can spot differences that aren’t explainable by circumstance or fortune.”

Today we hand the reins over to John Jervis, tadalafil of WIAIWYA and Hangover Lounge fame. He’s gone the whole hog with seven Christmassy selections… over to you John…

HELLO visitors to Haworth!

It’s 7th December, buy so why not sit back and tuck into SEVEN SWANS – the wiaiwya selection box, a CELEBRATION for HEROES on QUALITY STREET…

First up let’s unwrap the caramel swirl of David Tattersall, with a beautiful instrumental blues hymn, YES! Jesus Loves Me and then, because they’re moreish, the peanut cracknell of Jeff Mellin playing a South Carolina Spiritual, Ain’t That A Rockin All NightWorld of Fox and Clair Horton will have you chewing on the toffee penny, a gold wrapper for their cover of the Waitresses’ Xmas Wrappin’ next up the Werewandas are the purple one, these rockin’ boys and girls Love You Santa Claus what’s in the blue wrapper?, ah, yes, it’s the coconut eclair of Liverpool’s Meow Meow, desperate for a film they haven’t seen This Christmas we’re nearing the end of today’s treats, but there’s always room for Coming Soon, and the vanilla fudge of Last Christmas and saved for last, the strawberry creme of Clemence Freschard, but sadly she’s had a Bad Year

Make sure you don’t put the empty wrappers back in the tin, and hope the christmas shopping is going well… thanks to all the bands and Darren & Tom for having us along…

Hi! This is Tom here, prostate I’m the one behind Fika Recordings. I thought this first Fika-centric day of the advent calendar would provide a good opportunity to babble on about how the label started, pharm in particular, how the three Swedish bands featured here were pivotal in getting Fika Recordings off the ground.

Let’s start at the beginning, four or five years ago. I stumbled upon a track from a female Swedish duo on the internets, Lovesong #1 by Lost Summer Kitten, which quickly became a staple of mixtapes I’d make for friends, my radio shows and melancholic Sunday evening DJ sets. It was a heartwrenchingly tender song and impossible to get hold of a physical copy in the UK. One day I thought, I should try and help release songs like this, songs I just want to play to as many people as physically possible.
Fast forward to London Popfest 2010. I got chatting to a couple of Swedes who’d flown over for it in the pub. Talk turned to the mixtapes we’d put together for the swap box… and that song was still being a fairly regular feature of my tapes. Turns out these girls, Amanda and Matilda, were Lost Summer Kitten.
A couple of months before that, I’d come down to London to catch up with some friends and head to the Twee As Fuck night, where Stars In Coma were playing. This was where I met both the band, and Lisa Bouvier, who was playing keyboards and flute with them at the time. We kept in touch and got to hang out at popshows in Sweden, in Berlin and at Indietracks.
But it wasn’t until the summer, sat outside an East London pub in the sunshine with Lisa Bouvier, that the decision was made to start a record label. Beer had been consumed and it all seemed so simple to do… Let’s put out a few cassettes, hand-make them with care and affection, and get some of the bands over to play in London. Plus both she and Lost Summer Kitten had unreleased songs, so why not? Over the next 6 months, Lisa helped shoot down some of my more ridiculous ideas (though tea and cake with every release met with firm approval), I bothered Horowitz and Moustache Of Insanity to release cassettes with us too, and come February 2011, Fika Recordings was go.

From there, it has been consistently busy at Fika Recordings. The first four cassettes have all sold out, another four cassettes came out in late spring (from Amida, Slottet, Ed Greene and Petter Seander) and then the move to do a few vinyl records, with an 10″ EP from Red Shoe Diaries, a 12″ LP from Moustache Of Insanity and onto the Christmas In Haworth 10″ EP with Darren Hayman. There’ll be tracks from many of those artists coming up later in the month, but first, on to today’s free songs from Fika’s Swedish friends…

Written by Matilda Hjärtstam
Recorded at Kulturmejeriet, Lund, Winter 2007.
You can also download their sold out cassette on Fika Recordings, Not Another Sad Song. It is available on a pay-what-you-feel-like basis.

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A 6 track 10" EP from Darren Hayman in a hand screenprinted sleeve. Comes with digital download code and Darren's choice of Fika: a bag of loose leaf lapsang souchong and a recipe for Julia's Christmas Cake.

Fika Recordings

Fika Recordings is a London based DIY record label. We started in February 2011 and have so far released 8 cassettes and 2 records - Darren Hayman's Christmas In Haworth 10" will be our third vinyl release.
Every Fika Recordings cassette or record is painstakingly handmade. We screenprint and customise our record sleeves and our cassette cases are lovingly printed, cut and folded by our fair hands. Each release comes with a digital download code and the artist's choice of Fika - a tea bag and a recipe for a cake of some sort.
We sell all our releases as cheaply as we possibly can; you can order one from our online store or from good record shops.

Darren Hayman

Darren Hayman’s solo career has so far produced 5 full length albums, a wonderful January Songs project (a new song and video written and recorded every day in January 2011 and put online day by day), collaborations in a bluegrass outfit (Hayman, Watkins, Trout & Lee), an exhibition and album about people and animals in space (Vostok 5) and appearances playing bass with Rotifer. He used to play in a band called Hefner.